Get $200 Free from TD Canada Trust

TD Canada Trust have just introduced their "Simply Save" program. This program is a lot like Scotiabank's "Bank The Rest" program, which is really designed to just trigger more overdraft protection service fees on their poorest customers. You can read my previous blog entry on that if you like. In a nutshell, every time you use your atm card, be it for cash withdrawal or debit purchases, you can designate an amount of money to be transferred into a savings account. So it is just an automatic way to transfer money out of your chequing account and into a restrictive savings account with high fees. Such a savings account typically allows one free withdrawal per month, with a $10 fee for any subsequent withdrawals. So be careful if you have such a savings account, read the fine print.

For a limited time (to July 24, 2009), if you sign up for this program, TD will give you $10 (up to a maximum of $200) over the next year, for every $100 you manage to transfer to yourself. If you set up the plan to transfer the plan maximum of $5 every time you use your card, then it will take 20 transactions to save $100. So that's 20 transactions for the bank to give you a free $10, or in other words, the bank will pay you 50 cents every time you use your card for the next year. That's pretty darn sweet. So essentially if you shuffle $2K to yourself using 400 transactions next year, the bank gives you $200. To put it in perspective, you'd have to have a $10,000 GIC at 2% for a year to make $200. It's like the bank is setting aside 10 grand for you.

Don't forget to pull your savings out once a month and transfer them to some CDIC insured bank such as Canadian Tire Financial Services who will actually pay you some decent interest on the money. This will minimize the opportunity cost of your $2K used in the scheme.